Friday, 22 November 2013

Do you remember where you were the day President John F Kennedy was assassinated? I remember it well, It was a Friday evening 50 years ago I was 14 and had just arrived at my grandmother’s house for Friday night’s Sabbath dinner, I remember the fuss and sadness but it really didn’t mean that much to me, well it wouldn’t to a 14 year old. Since the assassination there has been many questions asked so I’ve set out 10 of the most asked questions

1. Was there more than one shooter? The sequence, number and direction of the shots that were fired in Texas remains a subject for debate with many believing the official government version of events to be implausible and pointing to the existence of a second shooter.
2. Where was Kennedy hit? In one of the most memorable scenes in Oliver Stone's film 'JFK', based on the book 'On The Trail of The Assassins' by Jim Garrison, the lead character is shown watching the Zapruder film - in particular frames 312 and 313. The footage appears to show Kennedy's head snapping back and to the left. According to Stone, and many other critics of the official version of what happened in Dallas, the footage is evidence that Kennedy was shot from the front. Stone, among others, continues to maintain also that witnesses corroborated the idea that Kennedy was shot from the front.
3. What happened to Kennedy's brain? In his recent book, End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, James Swanson claims that Robert F Kennedy, who was later assassinated himself, took his brother's brain in a bid to hide the true extent of President Kennedy's illnesses.
4. Are the Oswald backyard photographs authentic? The famous backyard photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with a Carcano rifle and holding up Marxist newspapers are among the most compelling evidence against Oswald. The rifle's markings appear to match those on the gun found in the Texas Book Depository after the killing.

5.Was the original autopsy report destroyed? According to T. Jeremy Gunn, who worked for the Assassination Records Review Board, the 1996 deposition of James Joseph Humes, who was one of the doctors who performed the autopsy on Kennedy, reveals that the procedure was not carried out in the normal manner. Humes claims that some procedures were missed, including that of removing and weighing all the organs.
6. Were the original autopsy photographs tampered with? There is also continuing controversy over the official autopsy photographs. During her 1997 deposition Sandra Spencer, who reportedly processed the film, said they were not the pictures that she remembered. "The prints that we printed did not have the massive head damages that is visible here," she told T. Jeremy Gunn.
7. How much interest did the authorities have in Lee Harvey Oswald? The true extent of the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA will probably not be known at least until the release of CIA's JFK assassination files in October 2017. What is known is that CIA aggressively tracked Oswald's movements. Senator Richard Schweiker once remarked that the CIA had their "fingerprints" all over the young alleged assassin.
8. What did the CIA know about the links between Oswald and Cuba? In his book 'A Cruel and Shocking Act' journalist Philip Shenon seeks to shed some light on a little known visit to Mexico, at the time a hotbed of cold war espionage, by Lee Harvey Oswald. According to the book witnesses place Oswald at a party with a Mexican woman who worked for Cuba.
9. Was Jack Ruby an FBI informant? The man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas, named Jack Ruby, is a staple of many of the Kennedy conspiracy theories. Many claim he killed Oswald as part of the wider plot to assassinate President Kennedy, and that he had significant links to organized crime.

10. What is in the CIA assassination files to be declassified in 2017? Thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation of Kennedy’s death remain classified prompting further speculation and allowing unanswered questions to remain unanswered. Author Jefferson Morley along with former House investigator G. Robert Blakey and others have this week launched a bid to get the CIA to release these documents - which remain protected for reasons of national security. Some argue that by withholding Kennedy-related documents the CIA continues to encourage the public to believe they’re covering up something more sinister.”Among the many details campaigners believe could be contained within the files is information about now-deceased CIA agent George Joannides and his possible contact with Lee Harvey Oswald.

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